


Lost Generation

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-08
Updated: 2011-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the War, before Serenity-the-Pilot</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Generation

Oh, we're a proud bunch, Zoe thought, stretching her legs beneath the small round table outside the cafe. It's just we have different opinions about what we're too proud to do.

Mal shook his head. "Long time ago, good. Now, no good."

Zoe yawned. She had to be at the bakery at six every morning. Even with a siesta, that didn't allow for much sleep once they closed down the bars (or got thrown out in advance of closing time).

Tracey thought she was insane, having a job like that. Having a job at all. Mal didn't outright spurn employment, but considered it a last resort. Every once in a while he'd sell an article, or even a story, to a newspaper or magazine. Somewhat to Zoe's surprise, in his unemotional and laconic way he could be a pretty fair to middlin' writer. Endlessly to Zoe's surprise, just about every song ever written lodged in Tracey's fingertips, and could emerge to fill the brandy snifter on his piano. But he seldom deigned to do that. Zoe herself was too proud to work as a cocktail waitress or worse, no matter how good the tips were.

Only once, Zoe inquired into the source of one of Tracey's sporadic but lavish contributions to their exchequer. She seldom made the same mistake twice. The only mistake she made over and over again had Mal's monogram on it.

The War had been over for two years, and they'd followed the sun, sometimes from one hemisphere to the other, sometimes to a new planet. There was usually just about enough food, but Zoe wasn't used to things being any different. There was plenty of thin red wine that they drank out of goatskins, and plenty of tystik.

They could have gone home. There was an amnesty, but the idea of re-education classes and apologies and loyalty oaths stuck in Zoe's craw almost as much as in Mal's. Ain't that just like a politician, Zoe thought. To try to grow loyalty out of disloyalty. Like seeing flowers grow out of a dunghill and thinking you could just reverse the process. Mal was a dirtboy, he didn't understand. Zoe was a Heavener, ship-raised. A ship was better than a house, because it was yours, it was your home, but you could just take off and take it with you when a place went bad or you made one too many damnfool mistakes there. She knew that if she told him this enough, eventually he'd think it was his idea.

More than once, when she woke up to go to work, Mal was up too (or hadn't slept yet). Sometimes he had his head down, writing a story. Sometimes he was just watching Tracey sleep.

Later on, Zoe thought that she'd been the first Ambassador: to places where they might have been a little less welcome without a woman around for the look of the thing.

One day Mal got an idea of his own. Zoe was working at a school then--not teaching, just sweeping the floors and finding lost mittens. They'd pay her a little more if she slept there so they wouldn't have to hire a watchman. Mal encouraged her to take the offer, because he'd found a room just big enough for him. And Tracey.

Zoe shrugged and agreed and went around on moving day. She had a bunch of straw flowers (so they'd have something pretty that wouldn't rot; she was damn sure they'd be able to find an empty wine bottle to put them in) and a stack of disposable film plates (because she knew how often they'd wash the dishes).

She found Mal standing outside in the rain, holding a note whose dripping blue ink she couldn't read. That was OK, she could figure out the contents from Mal's face. It was sooner than she expected Tracey to go off, leaving Mal with a dumb look on his face like his insides had been kicked in, but she'd expected "later" and not "never."

They packed a few things and moved on. They only took a few more trips as passengers.

Years went by, and Zoe and Mal were still drifting in the same directions. Wash was perfect. He was useful right where she could keep an eye on Mal, and he loved her more than she loved him.

Bad pennies always turn up. Zoe's heart near to broke, watching Mal look down at Tracey's perfect face in the box. She thought that was the worst hurt you could have, realizing all the things you wanted to say when--and just because--it was too late to ever say them, until a couple of days later she witnessed a worse hurt.

Mal being Mal had to play his trust games. Simon had played along, and he lived. Tracey didn't.


End file.
